Interactive voice response (IVR) systems that provide information and channel calls to service agents in response to the spoken words or touch tone signaling of a telephone caller have been deployed for more than a decade. The traditional call center for handling service calls was based on a private branch exchange (PBX) that included core automatic call distributor (ACD) functions for connecting a caller to one of a plurality of agents. During the 1990s, the advent of the Internet, electronic commerce, and computer telephony integration (CTI) transformed the call center in ways that enabled delivery of caller data to agents, thereby enabling agents to become more efficient and to improve customer service levels. Today, many enterprises use multiple call or contact centers (both terms are used synonymously and interchangeably in the present application) that extend across different geographic regions, with communications taking place through public switched telephone networks (PSTNs) and Internet protocol (IP) enabled networks that support multi-channel (voice, e-mail, text chat, and Web collaboration) customer interaction.
By way of example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,798,877 teaches a system in which a caller utilizes a personal computer (PC) for establishing an Internet connection to an ACD and for permitting a caller to select a particular agent. A system for providing information about a telephone caller to a telephone agent, wherein caller-specific data of the caller is used to generate a web page that displays the identified information to the agent is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 6,871,212. U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,715 discloses a system for operatively integrating an ACD and an IVR unit in which an interaction input from a caller is stored and then transmitted to an appropriate agent workstation. The session initiation protocol (SIP) is a widely accepted standard for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification and instant messaging, which incorporates the notion of caller preferences for certain types of interactive communication sessions (e.g., designating a certain genre of music when on hold during a call). A method and apparatus for analyzing the performance of an IVR system with respect to routing of calls or contacts received in accordance with a contact flow model is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,879,685.
One of the problems with existing systems is that callers with physical limitations often have difficulty interacting and communicating with IVRs and ACD agents. For example, persons with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may have a difficult time waiting for a call center agent to answer their call. Another example is an Alzheimer's patient being physically unable to understand and answer questions or prompts of the IVR due to difficulty in remembering previously conveyed information.
Few solutions exist to the problem of providing IVR and ACD services to disabled persons. A system that can notify a customer of the availability status of agents and which allows the customer to select a particular agent from a group of desired agents by pushing a button according to voice guidance given from the ACD is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,567,848. This reference also describes the use of collaborative software to provide the selected agent with information about physical handicaps or other difficulties of the caller before the conversation exchange begins. However, a drawback of this approach is that the caller must be physically able to manually input or otherwise convey information about his handicap to the agent beforehand. Obviously, persons with certain types of disabilities may be unable to effectively communicate information about their particular infirmity in the first place. Furthermore, this system suffers from a lack of integrity, since there is no way to prevent misuse by a caller feigning a handicap in order to gain preferential treatment.
Therefore, what is a needed is an improved system that provides IVR and ACD services to disabled callers, and which includes a mechanism for verifying the authenticity of the caller's disability.